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Thursday, February 9, 2012

Our Groovy Front Porch

Today started off rather interestingly. Yesterday when I had all that trouble with the chimney shroud, I thought that there was a chance the company would try to fault us for it. Sure enough, I got a call from the installer this morning, informing me that I would need to pay half of the cost for the new shroud because they had to go back and make a new one with the new measurements. I called the manager and after talking with him about the situation, he said that I didn't need to worry about paying anything for the new shroud, since I had followed all their instructions, and they had moved forward without my knowledge of how things were going to happen. I'm still a little worried about this company's business policies, but I hope we won't have any further issues with them. Thankfully, this has been the only hiccup in the process of building the house so far, and it worked out in our favor. The rest of the day went really well and was very exciting.

Our retaining wall has been built now. We had to figure out how to put the brick on the retaining wall since the cement wall curved and the bricks don't curve very well, but the mason came up with a solution that I'm really happy with. It makes the wall turn at about a 45 degree and continue out, so there isn't a curve, but I LOVE how it turned out.

This morning they also started adding stone to the chimney.

Here's a view of the new chimney shroud. It's fairly tall, but hopefully it will do its job. :)

We also have one of our wooden beams installed over the back porch. I don't know what that starburst design is called, but I really like how it looks.

The corrugated sheet metal has been installed on the front porch.

The cement trucks are on their way and will be pouring the garage and porch today.

It looks pretty neat though with just the metal sheets.

Inside the house, Daryl installed our pvc pipe to the TV so we can add/remove wires to the TV as needed.

We decided to order a new transom window to match the one in the powder room and will install it over the landing in the stairwell. I'm hoping it will work out well.

Matt and his crew showed up to lay down the plastic and wire grid for the garage.

We went back inside for lunch, and shortly after lunch the cement truck arrived.

We ran down to the house site while the truck got ready to back down the hill to the house.

Here's a before shot of the garage with the plastic and wire laid down, ready for the cement.

The cement truck finally made it to the house, so Tommy and I went to watch them pour the garage. The girls decided to stay and play on the rock pile and pretend to be kitties.

Here is Matt waiting for the cement to come.

They removed the board covering the cinder block support on the front of the garage...

...and they got busy pouring the cement.

They squished the cement up to the chalk lines along all the edges of the garage.

Then they raked it out and began smoothing the edges.

The cement didn't cover the connection to the hose bib, but it comes close!

Then they used their giant trowel to smooth the cement.

It's interesting to see how they all work together to smooth and spread out the concrete.

It's hard to see in this picture, but the back of the garage is higher up than the front of the garage so the water will drain out if it ever comes in.

These guys don't mess around and work very quickly! They had gotten this far in the time it took Tommy and I to go get the girls and watch from inside the house.

The kids were pretty impressed with how the concrete changed as the men worked.

Daryl was a lone worker today, finishing up final touches around the house. Here he is putting trim around the electrical box.

The chimney is really close to being completed!

Here's one of my sample house paint colors that I forgot to take a picture of yesterday. This is the Sherwin Williams Seriously Gray color and it's as gray of a blue as we could get. I like it.

My sister came over to excercise with me this afternoon, so after we worked out, I went back down to the house site to see what the cement crew was working on.

They had almost finished pouring the front porch! Did I tell you these guys were fast or what?

I had to head back home to start supper, but it was really cool to see everything starting to take shape and how homey this place is becoming.

The chimney is almost complete now too! I can't wait to see everything finished on the house!